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I used to run 9.04 on my server and used to be able to use Alt-T, Alt-S to shut the system down from the login screen. It was using a KDE login screen. Now I've upgraded to 10.04 and use the Gnome login screen and I can't see any keyboard shortcuts to shutdown the server. Is there a shortcut and if so, what is it?

Further info - I would normally shut down the server without turning on the monitor, which was easy using the keyboard shortcuts. Doing it with a mouse is not so easy without the monitor being on.

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It appears to be a missing feature. :-(

There is a bug filed for this issue: #505323, GDM's settings bar inaccessible with keyboard

See How do I subscribe to a bug for instruction on how to follow the progress of this bug. If you are already logged in to launchpad and ready to go, click "This bug affects me".

If you really need it, you can use a different display manager, kdm for the moment. Note that it has a big bundle of dependencies. You can also go ahead and ask a question here on how to set a keyboard shortcut that doesn't depend on gnome running.

There is a keyboard shortcut to shut down your system that is available all of the time, but it's rather tedious and complicated:

  • Alt+SysRq+(R, E, I, S, U, O).

    That is, hold down alt and sysrq, then type REISUO, or REISUB to reboot. The SysRq key is the Print Screen key on most keyboards (on some laptops, it's Fn +Print, or Alt+Fn+Print)

It's not a completely clean shutdown either (although it's good enough). I'm sorry to say I think that's as good as it gets at the moment.

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  • Each letter seems to perform a different action. Could you add a link to some documentation about what each key does? It would be interesting to know.
    – Skizz
    Jan 18, 2011 at 23:45
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    @Skizz, of course, I should have mentioned it. These are magic sysrq keys, a complete list of them is at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_sysrq Jan 18, 2011 at 23:59
  • As mentioned by @roberto below, is this answer still up-to-date, or have things changed in the last year? Feb 7, 2012 at 15:04
  • The current login screen has a button to shut down your computer - which sometimes doesn't work for me, but that's a different story. Apart from that, the bit about magic SysRQ keys is still fully up to date, and will be for some time. Feb 7, 2012 at 15:24

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